harlequin tuskfish

[Fishhead]

I have been on the hunt for a harlequin tuskfish but I have a couple of questions 1st;

1- does this wrasse need a sand bed?
2- I currently have the current fish in stock
-4 bangaii cardnals adults
-1 blue green chromis
-1 clown goby
-1 algae blenny
-1 black ocelllaris clown
-1 yellow tang lrg
-1 purple tang
-1 marine betta
Does anyone see any compatibility issues?


3- the tank is a 120 4'x2'x2' with a 100 gal sump and I do 55 gal water changes each week. my tank is a reef tank and I have no snails or ornamental shrimp. (the betta ate them lol) no crabs or snails

the lfs has an adult htf approx 6" in length. I'm mostly concerned for the marine betta any ideas?

 

[marrone]

It doesn't need a sand bed but does need a good size tank with hiding spaces. I would say your fish are ok, outside of the Clown Goby. You will have problems keeping shrimp and snails, as the HTusk will eat them, and smaller fish, like a Royal Gramma or other Basslet. You want to get an Aust HTusk, as they're more hardy and do better than the Indo ones. You do have a lot of fish for that size tank, and that's a pretty large weekly water change for a reef tank.

 

[Fishhead]

I meant to put every other week approx 100 gal a month. I have quite a bit of sps. Do you think taht amount of fish would be ok till I upgrade to a larger tank next spring?

 

[marrone]

That's still a very large water change, considering your system is a 120gal tank and a 100gal sump, net it's probably 120 - 150gal, depending on the amount of live rock you have. What are your levels, nitrates and Phosphates, and what type of skimmer do you have?

 

[Fishhead]

I have approx 300 lbs of live rock and a reef octopus skimmer. I run phos remover once every month and a half phos stays pretty low to non existent
my nitrates don't typically exceed 15 to 25 ppm I do feed alot. But then again I probably do too large water change. I haven't seen any adverse affects of doing the water changes yet. Am I setting myself up for something I will regret?

 

[marrone]

Considering that you're doing large water changes you still have pretty high nitrates, which adding another large fish, HTusk, will only increase that.

I'm not sure what you're saying about Phos remover, are you running something in a reactor or just putting some in the sump?

 

[Fishhead]

I run a phos reactor periodically. what i meant by saying that my nitrates don't exceed 15 to 25 ppm is that in the 3 years that I have had the tank running I hit an all time high of 25 ppm and usually maintain at 15pp or lower. I should be more specific. sry

 

[marrone]

Why periodically? Considering that you're feeding heavy, I would think you should run it all the time. You say your Phos level is pretty lowto non existent , what test kit are you using?

I would think that if you're running Nitrates at 15ppm, even with doing large water changes, you're only going to increase them by adding a HTusk. I would look into see why they're still so high and try to reduce them before adding even more of a load to your tank.